In order to offer all the occupants of a vehicle the highest possible comfort, it is desirable to be able to offer the passenger as well as the driver the possibility to set the cabin temperature. In other words it is desirable to have the possibility to maintain different temperatures in separate parts of the same cabin.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,759,269 shows a system in which the air conditioning, in this case temperature and air flow velocity, for the driver's and passenger's side respectively in a motor vehicle is regulated by means of separate control panels. The temperature in the cabin is determined by an interior temperature sensor. The disadvantage with this system is that the lack of separate and effectively placed temperature sensors seriously affects the possibility to regulate the temperature automatically; the system does not measure the temperatures where respective occupants sit and sense the cabin climate. The system according to Swedish document SE-457574 also makes use of a single temperature sensor and accordingly displays the same disadvantages.
Improved attempts to achieve separate climate control are described in the Japanese patent JP 59-59517 and in the French patent FR 2608520. These systems make use of a better placement of temperature sensors in the cabin, at head level, though the temperature at head level is an insufficient measure of the temperature around the driver or the passenger. The Japanese document JP 58188714 and the German document DE 3215293 describe systems which comprise temperature sensors placed in the air-vent and in the cabin on respective cabin sides. Despite separate temperature measuring, neither of these systems have separate regulators and can therefore not compensate for different temperature changes on the driver and passenger sides respectively in an independent manner.
The object of the present invention is accordingly to provide a device which permits automatic precise and substantially independent climate control in separate regions in a vehicle's cabin.